The wait for the grand finale of The Best Man saga is almost over! The Best Man: The Final Chapters promises to be the cherry on top of the multi-decade story of college friends reuniting to support each other through life’s biggest moments.
ESSENCE caught up with the actors ahead of the 8-part limited series’ premiere on Peacock to discuss all things role reprisal for the all-star cast.
Releasing in 1999, The Best Man helped solidify Taye Diggs, Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Monica Calhoun, Harold Perrineau and Melissa De Sousa as cultural icons. Now, nearly 25 years later, most of the cast gets a chance to revisit these now-iconic characters at a different station in life – established careers, marriages, children, and new outlooks born of age and wisdom.
“I think that’s the interesting part,” Chestnut says. “You’d never have an opportunity over the course of three different decades to be able to go back and work with the same people in the same character. I don’t think it’s ever really been done before with that time span in between.”
“It’s just coming together as family and being able to enjoy each other and get paid to have fun.”
Revisiting characters they played in their mid-20’s and again in their late 30’s, it’s a rare opportunity to show the growth and maturity one experiences as life shifts their circumstances and their purview over time.
“Well, there’s a version of where they are to where we are,” Hall says. “I think that’s what’s fun about Malcolm’s writing. He’s writing the evolution of what it is to grow old in life and in friendships. It’s maturity. You’re watching these characters go from thinking younger to maturing, but also remaining true to the essence of who they’ve always been.”
The Best Man: The Final Chapters premieres on Peacock with all eight episodes dropping on December 22, 2022.